First RIAA Case Victim Finally Speaks Out 204
An anonymous reader writes with a link to an article at P2P Net about the very first victim of the RIAA's file-sharing litigation sweep. The site gave Jammie Thomas the chance to explain in her own words what the last two years have been like. She recounts her experiances with subpoenas, Best Buy, and most of all, stress. Even after all this time, her case is still in legal limbo: "As for what's next, my attorney filed a motion to have the verdict thrown out or to have the judgment reduced based on the constitutionality of the judgment. This is not an appeal, this is a post trial motion. We are currently waiting for the plaintiffs to file their response to our motion. The judge will not make a decision on that motion until after the plaintiffs have filed. The timeline for appeals is we have 30 days after the judge decides all post trial motions before we file any appeals ... I do know personally I cannot allow my case to end this way, with this judgment. My case will be used as a sledgehammer by the RIAA to force other people caught in the RIAA's driftnets to settle, even if they are or are not guilty of illegally sharing music online."
I'm glad... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if people can donate to their legal fund?
Re:I'm glad... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I'm glad... (Score:4)
Re:I'm glad... (Score:5, Interesting)
The only reason you don't like her is because she lost. And you are somehow blaming her for that.
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The OP's point: This particular individual appears to be a member of group one, but is trying to get in front of groups one and two (the quote about 'this judgement
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if she's guilty then she should have known they had a mountain of evidence.
But they do not have a "mountain of evidence" as our own NewYorkCountryLawyer has proved in court. See http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2007/03/deposition-of-riaas-expert-available.html [blogspot.com]
(I can't find the slashdot article where this was posted).
They employ a bunch of computer dufuses and their "evidence" is most suspect, but don't take anyone's word for it. Read the deposition of their "expert".
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For the record, I pirate, but I don't claim to have moral superiority in doing so. I understand it is illegal, and try to financially support products I enjoy to ensure those products will continue to be produced.
I don't subscribe to the theory that it is okay to break the law so long as there are worse criminals out there. I simply acknowledge that as an adult, I don't follow all the rules.
Thanks, but no thanks (Score:3, Insightful)
The jury left the box convinced she was a liar, and showed absolute contempt for her defense as a whole. The most she can expect to accomplish now is to minimize the damage.
The one fact that can't be erased is that a jury found for The Big Bad Wolf and not Little Red Riding Hood. That should - but almost certainly won't - silence talk of Jury Nullification.
The jury is small-C conservative. It believes in th
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However, she is a kid with no money. They aren't really going to be able to collect anything, and if parents are smart, they'd look into a good bankruptcy lawyer to protect what they can. Continuing to fight the case isn't about her, because she was wrong. However, that doesn't make the RIAA right.
D
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You are thinking in terms of the criminal law.
The RIAA is not a government agency. This was not a criminal trial.
The instinct of a judge in a civil case is the pare the issues down to their bare essentials. He does not want to see "the big picture." He wants to bring a mercifully quick end to the dispute.
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In the US, we have copyright law. Producing a copy of the file, such as sharing the file, clearly breaks copyright law, and it has always been ruled this way. There are some who suggest the downloading also produces a new copy on your computer, and thusly the creation of that copy means you then violated copyright law. I don't know how often this has gone before a judge, because primarily they seem to go
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright [wikipedia.org]
Producing copies violates copyright law, however it was deemed legal to produce personal use backups. Back in the day before hard drives, all software was on tapes, and then floppies. It was fairly common to backup your software to other tapes/floppies, because they died. So thusly, you are granted the rig
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Use the CD to provide background music for your neighborhood gas and grill and you will be hearing from ASCAP and BMI. Stream it through an Internet radio station and you will be reminded again about the rights you did and not acquire when you paid for that alblum at Walmart. These issues were being litigated as early as 1914.
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This is about the "time fitting the crime".
The "victim" can't even be bothered to present some guess as to what harm was done.
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You cannot take a guess into court. The rights holder doesn't have to take a guess into court. The rights holder can stand on his demand for statutory damages.
But be careful what you ask for:
Your rip of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has been downloaded 20,000 times, according to estimates that are reliable enough to go before a jury.
Do you want to chance being assessed civil damages based on retail list or the
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Ugh, it's not a fine. It's a civil judgment. If she can't get it overturned on appeal her options are to pay up or file bankruptcy.
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Any pirate interested in an insurance fund to cya should seriously consider sending over a few bucks. This could be a very important precedent.
Enough with the spin (Score:2, Insightful)
she was NOT the "victim" of the RIAA, they were judged to be the victim of her actions if anything.
Re:Enough with the spin (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Enough with the spin (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Enough with the spin (Score:4, Insightful)
This works only if the geek's indie band defines your tastes in music forever.
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So...pay for the utility you garner from it?
Re:Enough with the spin (Score:4, Interesting)
Financial ruin for the rest of your days over 100MB. Fair? Not even close. $222,000. $2220/MB. Those had best have been some seriously good songs to be worth $6-7000 per song.
The RIAA has been playing an extortion game all along. The settlement was probably not fair either, and anyone in their right minds knows that. No, what needs to happen is a large-scale act of civil disobedience (and in reality, that's already happening) and whether or not this one person gets things set straight or not could very well set the course for how this all plays out here in the US. I don't necessarily buy into the poster-child image, but anyone that the RIAA has come after for downloading can wear the title of "victim" and be correct in doing so IMHO. If you're not pressing CD's or running a large-scale piracy ring, they have no business coming after you. I don't care WHAT the law says. I wish I had the magic wand that fixed the fact that they aren, but I don't.
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In either case, a poor mother of 2 probably can't handle hundreds of thousands of dollars, even for trying to sell a few songs. There is no doub
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"I RTFA and others to try and find out if this woman actually did try to SELL the music (not the kind of "piracy" I am guilty of on a daily basis) but I could find nothing. I don't know where the OP who are so against her are getting their info. Can anyone please confirm if she is being sued for downloading music or if it is a much more serious case of "real piracy"?"
You've misunderstood the relevant definition of the word "piracy." It's much more broad than you thought. E.g. dictionary.com:
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There - he got modded up plenty when I first saw the comment (RIAA bandits moderating
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The jury is never told the net worth of the parties - neither the defendant's to pay damages or the plaintiff's ability to absorb the loss.
There is no way to know how many downloads can be traced back to her as a source. I am not sure I would want to billed - at 99 cents a track or $20 for the video - if that ever beomes possible.
The jury applied the existing statutory formula for calculating dama
Re:Enough with the spin (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, if you think paying $20 for a DRM'ed CD full of crappy, with low-audio quality music at the same price that a vinyl disc in the old times is NOT a ripoff, then I ask what the fuck are YOU on.
And here's a proof that the RIAA are *NOT* representing the artists:
Re:Enough with the spin (Score:5, Insightful)
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Everyone in the US is breaking the law to some degree. Breaking the law is orthogonal to rights, morals, etc. OK, it may not be completely orthogonal, but they are not the same thing. In my area, exotic pets like rabbits, snakes, etc, are illegal, but they sell them in the stores. Nobody cares, but if the police get bored one day, they might start busting people for it. In most of the s
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Unless you feel that Jesus Christ was "morally wrong" in choosing to be born in Bethlehem when he knew it was against the law at the time.
Re:Enough with the spin (Score:4, Insightful)
fixed
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Why doesn't it change the fact? Given the economic model of copyright that allows distributed cost recuperation (and distribution of affordable content), a proper hard-line decision would most likely favor abolishing mixtaping (personal sharing) rather than allowing wholesale copying. Practically, though, there
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he idea that you need "permission" to make a copy of something you own is absurd. You certainly shouldn't be able to make a copy of something and then sell it (which is what a pirate does) and you shouldn't be able to pass it off as something you created. But I don't see how it should be a criminal or even civil concern if you make a copy for free. It used to be fine to do so for, say, a friend. Now that you can do it for countless people, it's an issue. It's the same thing, but it's wider spread. That's a monetary issue. An issue of impact that such wide distribution can have. But that doesn't change the fact that it should either be legal or illegal to make a copy of media that I own. Period. DRM interferes with that.
The fact is, making a copy of something you don't own the rights to (and you don't, all semantics aside) and giving that copy away to countless people is and should be illegal -- you do not own it, and you are harming another (label, artist) financially when you do so. Frankly, if someone wants to download music fine -- but don't pretend it's anything less than stealing. And if someone wants to make it available for download too, that's fine as well; but again, don't dress it up in pseudo-moralistic bull
Re:Enough with the spin (Score:5, Interesting)
1) CDs are not $20
2) CDs are not DRMed, and haven't been for a while now. Even when there was DRM, it was only on a handful of CDs.
3) The quality of music on CDs is not low quality.
4) Trent is the exception, not the rule. Successful artists like Trent can afford to go it alone and don't speak for the vast majority of artists on record labels who are struggling to make it. For evidence, you only need to look at which and how many artists are speaking out. There simply isn't an outcry, and one artist doesn't make a movement.
5) Anyone who suggests $10-$13 is a rip-off for a CD needs to think about the fact that that is the same as 3 cups of coffee at starbucks and often less than the price of a new book. Think about the amount of use you get out of an album.
6) Read what the jurors wrote. She's clearly guilty, and even her legal strategy acknowledges that. What she's trying to do now is get her sentence reduced.
People who make creative works for a living deserve to get paid, if that's what they want (Radiohead and others can give their stuff away for free if they want). The rights of the many (pirates) don't outweigh the rights of the few (creators). No one is fooled by the indignation of those who wave the banner of "fair use". Everyone knows the vast majority of these people are just pirates, trying to protect their own hides.
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And 3 cups of coffee at Starbucks is around $6, I think its around $2 for a venti coffee.
And yes, what she did is technically illegal, but we must question A) the ethics of the law, and B) the unbalance of act and punishment. The law is ethically dubious, artists deserve compensation, but this must be balanced with fair us, and the rights of the customer, current law fails to hold this balance, and the debate ignores the fact that this
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> the fact that that is the same as 3 cups of coffee at starbucks and often
> less than the price of a new book. Think about the amount of use you get out of an album.
A whole lot more work goes into the average book than a typical CD.
3 cups of starbucks coffee involve real physical items that get consume
and need to be grown again and then shipped halfway across the planet.
Even the better CD's can be the product of no more tha
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Re:Enough with the spin (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, there is a clear issue these days when it comes to the costs involved in retail. Starbucks may charge a huge amount, but a good chunk of the money goes into lease prices for the location and paying employees and utilities, not to mention supplies. This is a part of the reason Amazon and other online companies can sell things cheaper, because they have a lower overhead. That still doesn't excuse the record labels. The costs to manufacture a CD have dropped since the early 1990s, so all the increased costs we see are about money going into the pockets of the record labels. If the artists do not get more money when the record labels have increased the prices, that shows where the real problem is.
As for fair use, as long as I do not duplicate a CD with the intent to play it at the same time in multiple locations, there should be no violation of any rules. I should be able to make one copy of a CD for my car, one for work, and one for home(so the original stays protected). As long as other people do not have access to the duplicates while I am at another location, there really should be no issue.
I do see an issue with lower quality of downloaded music when purchased legally from an online store, even if most people can not hear the difference, it is still an inferior version compared to what you get on a CD. And then, there is the question of how much money the artists get from legally downloaded music from these purchases. If only one or two cents out of each dollar goes to the artist, that really doesn't help make a good case for ANYONE supporting the RIAA. Take the money the RIAA is paid and give it back to the artists who deserve more than they get.
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The rights of the many (pirates) don't outweigh the rights of the few (creators). No one is fooled by the indignation of those who wave the banner of "fair use". Everyone knows the vast majority of these people are just pirates, trying to protect their own hides
I agree with the first part. I'm not comfortable with the idea of helping a large group of people by harming the few. It works both ways, though. You shouldn't harm everyone in order to punish the majority at the expense, again, of the few. Don't shoot down the legitimacy of fair use laws to spite the pirates at the expense of everyone else. I shouldn't have to be paranoid about making sure I don't have any music in the background while I'm running for my camera to record my son's first steps for fear
one and a half cheers for poster (Score:2)
You make some excellent points, right up to
Fair use (or "fair dealing" in some jurisdictions) is an important set of exceptions to copyright owners' right to control copying. It means that copyright does not trump free speech, by allowing parody. It helps the public by allowing reviewers to criticise dreadful works, without fear of spurious copyright lawsuits. It promotes research, education and the spread of knowledge by allow
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Down here CD's do cost $20(or more). There are quite a few legacies of the old exchange rates down here that refuse to go down(games~=$100 for new PC games more for console, videos ~= $30 for a DVD and music ~= $20 for a single CD for example). Entertainment here in general is much more expensive than it is in the US(movie ~= $16, concert > $100, etc).
Trent feels, probably quite rightly, that th
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"Well, if you think paying $20 for a DRM'ed CD full of crappy, with low-audio quality music at the same price that a vinyl disc in the old times is NOT a ripoff, then I ask what the fuck are YOU on."
I'm curious where the $20 came from. CDs haven't been priced at $20 in the US for years; the average price of the top selling CDs on Amazon is around $10 or $11. Did you really think CDs cost $20 when you wrote this, or did you inflate it to make a point?
I'm also not sure what you mean about "at the same p
The good times for vinyl... (Score:2)
The good times for vinyl were in the 50's and 60's.
The only competition, magnetic tape.
Vinyl does not look inexpensive when you adjust for inflation - and vinyl needs to be handled with great care, any serious collector has always spent the big bucks on turntables, tone arms, pickups, and so on.
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Juries don't have the power to compel somebody to go into the past and commit a crime so that their actions in all cases match up with a guilty verdict.
The allegations that she deliberately destroyed evidence won't result in a second trial, because there is no evidence at all that she had destroyed any. The
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Sure there is, if you're not looking for redress of grievance but deterrent effect.
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When has it been illegal to have a hard drive failure? Out of 20,000 cases and an average life of 3 years for a hard drive some are expected to die. This shouldn't be an automatic 222,000 fine to have a drive failure.
Am I now required to archive all my dead drives? Am I now required to replace my drive every 6 months when I upgrade Ubuntu? Am I now required to replace my drive in the XP m
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Juries are a group of 12 people not even smart enough to get out of Jury Duty.
Seriously- I've been a juror twice. I've posted elsewhere about the details, but suffice it to say that in BOTH cases, the other jurors were, well, idiots.
The first case was a civil case. A guy walked behind a car that was reversing, got knocked down, and broke hic collarbone. He was asking for Over HALF A MILLION DO
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i learned it from dick cheney (Score:2, Insightful)
That would be true, except that in this country the constitution is not so much a law, as it is a theory.
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You mentioned Dick Cheney and constitutional power. Did you see the recent Oct. 16, 2007 "Cheney's Law" episode of Frontline on PBS? That week's episode was about Dick Cheney and David Addington's secret behind-closed-doors battle to expand presidential power. It details how much of what they have been doing is on shaky ground legally and constitutionally. Their actions frequently involved rejecting congressional authority and doing whatever they wanted based on their own creative legal theories.
Back
20/20 hindsight (Score:2)
Her name is Jammie? (Score:2)
The Issue (Score:2)
However, how they should be held accountable is another thing altogether. These lawsuits are the only thing I can think of where the damage cost is in the thousands for an item marketed for under a dollar.
It's like if you stole a pack of pens from Wally World. Not only were you charged for the price of the item, but were also charged the price of the pack for every poten
Lack of an "Expert Witness" (Score:2)
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"This should have been thrown out. I say this because if she is honest and there was never Kazaa software or other p2p software on her machine, doesn't that automatically make her innocent?"
You see, that's the thing: she wasn't honest. One of the things that nailed her was her use of the same "Tereastarr" username on all of her accounts, including the Kazaa account that was in use at her IP address.
She also plays with words a bit. She states that Kazaa wasn't installed on her new hard drive. That's no
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if you can't afford the expert witness
and your gut tells you it will be suicidal to put your client on the stand wihout damn good back-up
you settle out of court.
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Legal Terminology 101 (Score:3, Informative)
This was a civil trial, not a criminal trial. In civil trials:
To sum up:
When you mix these terms up you sound ignorant, like when your mother confuses the difference between USB and ethernet cables or your sister confuses the terms uploading and downloading.
"Your mother" jokes to follow, I'm sure.
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I don't have to worry (Score:2)
Kids (Score:2)
Fast-forward to modern times. I have a divorced friend whose son lives with his single mom. Let's call the kid "Johnny". Johnny has a lot of after-school activities, plus his grandparents live a short di
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"(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;"
17 USC 106 [cornell.edu]
Nothing in
Re:Victim? (Score:5, Informative)
She was judged to be LIABLE, not guilty, based on the fact that she had offered files for upload, despite earlier cases where such an offering was not considered to be fact enough to prove infringement. A fact which was hidden from the trial judge even tho it was known to the RIAA attorneys, who should have disclosed that to the court.
This should be tossed on that fact alone.
Now, when will we see the RIAA sue EMI?
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For all the difference that makes...
Couldn't her lawyer have just done some research? It's not the lawyer's responsibility to poke potential holes in his own arguments.
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Re:Victim? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the way that she was asked to pay $222,000 instead of a couple thousand (or even some hundred dollars, taking into account the price of $0.70 per downloaded song the RIAA gets).
In short, the RIAA wants her not to pay them back what they "lost", but they want to make an example of her. Just like the UFO hacker who was treated like a terrorist by the Bush administration.
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Well isn't that called restitution? yes, there must be a punitive damage. But come on, two fucking hundred dollars? The punishment does NOT fit the "crime" (it was NOT a crime, the lawsuit was civil, not criminal) in any way.
Re:Victim? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your right, its more than $.55. But what is the actual punishment for that? Is it it $200,000? No. I didn't think so either. Not even if you stole 24 of them. Not even if you stole 240 of them. Seems to me $220,000 is right out of line.
The way I see it is she paid $2,000 for the activity and she paid $220,000 as a penalty for trying to run and hide under the cloak of the anti-RIAA movement to get herself out of a jam
I see. So if you stole 24 candybars, and then plead not guilty, and tried to get sympathy because you stole them from WalMart who is disliked by a big chunk of society, so you tried to ride that wave of discontent -- THEN you should have to pay $220,000??
Sorry, nope still I don't see it. You still only stole 24 candybars. Your penalty should be based on what you actually did, not the defence strategy. If you want to punish her for "trying to hide under the cloak of the anti-RIAA movement" charge her separately with that, and convict her for it. Otherwise get bent. (Good luck with that by the way, since its not even remotely illegal. And besides the RIAA itself is a cloak the labels hide under to hide from any negative PR blowback for what they do while wearing that cloak.)
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To make this a little more parallel, its worth mentioning that the store that sold the candy bars also was found liable in a class action lawsuit for price fixing of said candy bars for years.
Here is a PDF [state.ny.us] for the filing where 29 states and territories took the likes of record companies and retail outlets to court for "under the laws of the United States and of the States to recover damages suf
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Yes it is. Stealing is a more serious crime. Someone is actually physically deprived of property.
it'd be like finding the recipe for a candy bar, and then making exact copies of them, and giving them away for free. When, you phrase it like that, it's hard to say, well, it was a 55 cent candy bar, so they should pay that much.
No it'd be like finding a the recipe for a candy bar, putting a note up at the local grocery store with the recipe printed on it, and then going home
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If that were the case several questions come to mind:
1) Why did they wait two years before acting? You'd think they could have removed the candy machine the following day, rather than wait 2 years before pouncing on her, when the 'potential damages' have racked up to astronomical levels.
2) If it took 2 years before they even noticed it, then it probably wasn't doing anywhere near
The RIAA doesn't have the right to set penalties. (Score:2)
It's not up to the RIAA to set, or to even be directly involved in, setting penalties for breaking the law. They're entitled to actual damages and court costs, and that's it.
If the RIAA had pressed charges against her or convinced a prosecutor to press charges against her in a criminal court, and she was found guilty of breaking the law in a criminal court, then she would have been s
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True, but I believe they are getting a punishment that doesn't fit the crime. At the same time, juries are free to vote for not guilty for person who are very clearly absolutely guilty in cases where the jury believes the law is unfair.
Of course you need a well informed jury.
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Guilty? (Score:2)
This all about liability.
Who is "we"? (Score:2)
I don't recall agreeing to that. Who's this "we all" who agreed that?
So in what way is she the victim, again?
She's just as much a victim as the old lady who lost her house because she didn't pay some minor neighborhood association fees, or anyone else who's been hit by disproportionate judgments or
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But for those who would say that she's not guilty - too late for that. Legally, she is.
You now owe $400,000 for mistaking the difference between guilt and liability.
Wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
She's not black.
She's Ojibwe (Chippewa). She's a member of the Mille Lacs Band.
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GP, Keep that up and pretty soon the University of Delaware will be hiring you to define a racist.
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However, this doesnt alter the fact that damages of more the 10x actual cost have been shown as unconstituional in other cases, and that is what the motion is about - should the RIAA be exempt from your constitution? If not then it should not be able to claim 1000x damages for items in this case. Once the issue of damages is decided, she can